Liverpool, Man Utd in bombshell talks
LONDON. — Liverpool and Manchester United are in talks about a bombshell plot involving Europe’s biggest football clubs to join a new FIFA-backed tournament that would reshape the sport’s global landscape.
Sky News has learned that financiers are assembling a US$6 billion (£4.6 billion) funding package to assist the creation of what could become known as the European Premier League.
More than a dozen teams from England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are in negotiations about becoming founder members of the competition.
As many as five English clubs could sign up to join it, with a provisional start date said to have been discussed as early as 2022.
Sources said that FIFA, football’s world governing body, had been involved in developing the new format, which is expected to comprise up to 18 teams, and involve fixtures played during the regular European season.
The top-placed teams in the league would then play in a knockout format to conclude the tournament, with prize money for the winners expected to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
One football industry figure said that a formal announcement about the plans was possible as soon as the end of this month, although yesterday a number of key details - including the full list of participating clubs - had yet to be finalised and the plans could still fall apart.
According to insiders, a handful of English sides have been approached about joining the league, with the other candidates comprising Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur.
It is not thought that any of the English clubs have yet signed legally binding terms to join, and it was unclear which member of the so-called ‘big six’ would miss out if only five are ultimately involved.
The news will drop a fresh bombshell into the fracturing landscape of English football, which has spent recent weeks at loggerheads over proposals - engineered by Liverpool and Manchester United — to hand more power to the biggest clubs while providing a coronavirus bailout for teams below the top flight.
A blueprint, dubbed Project Big Picture, would have seen the Premier League reduced in size from 20 to 18 clubs, reducing the number of domestic top-flight fixtures each season.
The plan, denounced as “a backroom deal” by government ministers, was rapidly abandoned last week.
If the latest plans bear fruit, they would effectively constitute the European super league that has been subject to on-off discussions for many years.
The giant Wall Street bank JP Morgan is in talks to provide US$6 billion of debt financing to help launch the European Premier League, with the proceeds repayable from future broadcast income generated by the tournament, according to a football executive.
Other banks are expected to join the financing of the new project, which would become one of the world’s richest annual team sports competitions if it gets off the ground.
Each of the founding teams are expected to earn fees of hundreds of millions of pounds to participate, with clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid receiving the biggest sums for joining. — Sky Sports.